Contemporary crisis of governance

Metaphoric Revolution: in quest of a manifesto for governance through metaphor (Part #2)

Scope of governance: The experience of the past decades in designing and implementing international development-related strategies, and governing the process through which they become possible, is not especially encouraging. Major disaster has been averted but the early hopes are far from being fulfilled. The situation has become worse for many and the risks of major disaster have increased for everyone. Particularly tragic is the recognition that the international system of institutions is defective in its management of the development process, riddled with inefficiencies and lacking in credibility, especially in the eye of public opinion. This situation has recently been officially documented for the first time for the United Nations system by Maurice Bertrand of the Joint Inspection Unit (5). It is within the constraints of this context that the sustainability of development advocated in the Brundtland Report (6) needs to be considered.

This paper follows earlier work on the challenges of collective comprehension of appropriateness and the special constraints it imposes on the design and implementation of any development initiative (2). The paper addressed the resulting challenges for 'governance'. This term has been resuscitated by John Fobes, former Deputy Director-General of UNESCO, in order to promote a reconceptualization of the commonly used terms 'governing' and 'government'. In recent remarks to a Club of Rome conference he states:

'The concept of governance emphasizes that order in society is created and maintained by a spectrum of institutions, only one of which is known as government. By examining that spectrum at all levels of society, we can obtain a broader sense of 'governability' as it is exercised in policy-making, in providing services and the application of law. Order is certainly part of governance. But I believe that one should also consider governance, at least at the international level, as a global learning exercise. By so doing, politicians, practitioners, activists and academies may expand their thinking beyond the traditional concepts of government, of international organizations and of the exercise of sovereignty'.(7)

Of special value in Fobes' remarks is his creative response to the complexities of the situation. He recognizes that the processes of governance have become increasingly complex and are no longer strictly limited to governments. He points out that the fact that so many individuals and groups, whether NGO's or IGO's, at all levels, want to 'get into the act' of learning, if not governing, is both hopeful and chaotic. It is for this reason that he points to the need to re-examine attitudes to different 'learning modes'. 'Learning, and learning to 'govern', or to participate in governance, on the part of citizens and their civic and special interest groups, have become part of the survival skills for nations and for humanity as a whole.'(7)

The dimension of the challenge is indicated, if only within the international community of organizations, by that the latest edition of the Yearbook of International Organizations (8). It identifies 29,800 international governmental and nongovernmental bodies, acting in 3,000 subject areas, on some 10,000 perceived 'world problems' documented in the Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential(1).

The focus in this paper on the use of metaphor in governance is one response to the recognition articulated by Fobes that: The stresses from social change that require a broader sense of governance have called into play Ashby's 'law of requisite variety' (which may be interpreted as stating that 'the regulators or governors of a system must reflect the variety in that system in order to be of service to it'). This applies as much to the government of a country, as of a small group, or even an individual's endeavours to govern his or her own behaviour in a turbulent social environment.

The question explored here is that of the need to provide a sufficiently rich medium for the communication of complex insights in a world in which the possibilities of governance are constrained by the explanations and proposals that can be made meaningful to public opinion. The complexity of econometric and global models in their present form makes it improbable that they can be of any significance to those who must justify their actions to public opinion and receive their mandates from an informed electorate.

Clusters of dilemmas: This section endeavours to order the principal factors contributing to the contemporary crisis of governance and of bringing about any form of sustainable development. Such factors may be clustered of course in different ways. The number of such clusters it is useful to select is partially determined by constraints explored in earlier papers (9).

In order therefore to maximize the number of explicit factors identified as contributing to the crisis of governance the following eight clusters are proposed:

(a) Simplicity: Governance, to be feasible, requires that the number of factors or issues on which a mandate is sought, or for which policies must be developed, should be limited in number and defined simply enough to be meaningful. They should be interesting rather than boring. Failing this the preoccupations of governance lose their focus, and the governing body becomes vulnerable to loss of its mandate in favour of some other coalition whose focus is appropriately simple. Conventional strategies in response to this dilemma include:
- only focusing on those issues which through their identification can conveniently come to be perceived as important as the result of a self-fulfilling process;
- only focusing on a few macro-issues which lend themselves to a multiplicity of simple descriptions, whilst failing to encompass their inherent complexity.
(b) Complexity: Governance, to be practical, must necessarily deal with the complexities and crises of the real world, whether or not they lend themselves to any meaningful ordering or pattern of mandates for specialized agencies. Failing this governance is overwhelmed by the many pressures of the moment and becomes vulnerable to loss of its mandate in favour of some other coalition that can deal with them. Conventional strategies in response to complexity and the associated information overload include:
- elaboration of an array of administrative procedures, plus filtering and delaying mechanisms for every conceivable circumstance;
- displacement of new issues and pressures by other issues and pressures for which procedural responses already exist.
(c) Requisite variety: Governance, in order to be able to exert some long-term degree of control over the dynamics of society, must itself be sufficiently varied in its policy-making capacity to respond to the variety of issues which may emerge. Failing this the governing body is caught off-balance by the dynamics of the society and is vulnerable to loss of its mandate in favour of some appropriately dynamic coalition. Conventional strategies in response to this challenge include:
- emphasis on short-term issues and programmes to disguise any lack of ability to handle long-term trends;
- emphasis on publicizing long-term projects, whilst disguising the degree to which they themselves will aggravate other problems for which no remedy has been envisaged.
(d) Operational relevance: Governance, in order to be credible to those mandating it, must be able to formulate its policies in a form which is readily implementable, especially in response to issues which call for immediate action. Failing this the governing body is perceived as irrelevant to the solution of pressing issues and is vulnerable to loss of its mandate in favour of some more practical coalition. Conventional strategies in response to this requirement include:
- emphasis on short-term remedial programmes, irrespective of whether these effectively respond to the problem which evoked their creation;
- focusing attention away from the more obvious solution onto the necessity for some alternative programme of effective remedial action (for which an appropriate mandate may not be obtainable).
(e) Complementarity: Governance, in order to attract support from a plurality of unrelated (or even mutually hostile) sectors, must be able to configure those sectors into a pattern such that they appear as complementary to one another. Failure of the governing body to establish such a context, or community of interest, leads to fragmentation and erosion of its support, rendering it vulnerable to any coalition of wider appeal. Conventional strategies in response to this requirement include:
- promotion of superficial consensus in such a way as to disguise irreconcilable differences between sectors;
- cultivation of distinct communications with each sector, concealing any contradictions between the undertakings made.
(f) Difference: Governance, in order to respond effectively to disagreement, critical opposition and alternative insights, must develop some means of dealing with incommensurable positions. Failure of the governing body to develop such skills makes any form of co-existence with its opponents unstable and renders it highly vulnerable to attack. Conventional strategies in response to such differences include:
- disparagement, neutralization or suppression of any dissidence (possibly through judicious manipulation of information), implicitly denying any merit in such viewpoints;
- efforts to persuade the dissident group to modify its position or to coopt its members.
(g) Containment: Governance, to be able to maintain its domain of influence, must reinforce a certain order within definable boundaries. Failure of the governing body to do so results in an open system vulnerable to the effects of uncontrollable variations in external influences. Conventional strategies in response to this requirement include:
- strengthening of boundaries and gate-keeping functions, justified by the necessity of excluding 'undesirable' influences;
- limiting freedom of action in order to facilitate the maintenance of the favoured order.
(h) Empowerment: Governance, to be able to encourage the growth and development expected by those who mandate it, must be able to empower people and groups to undertake and sustain new initiatives of their own accord. Failure of the governing body to do so results in stagnation and disaffection rendering it vulnerable to replacement by a coalition encouraging such initiative. Conventional strategies in response to this requirement include:
- mobilization of people and groups in support of some defined programme, irrespective of the initiatives they would otherwise choose to take;
- manipulation, subversion or cooptation of initiatives if they achieve any degree of social significance.

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Contemporary crisis of governance